Christmas 2
Matthew 2:1-12
I was reading through a recent Newsweek that had about a dozen interviews with, as the magazine described it, “people who matter on what matters most.” It included an interview with Bill Maher. I was surprised to see him lumped in with the likes of Hillary Clinton and Henry Kissinger, David Petraeus and Harmid Karzai. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given Maher’s propensity to offend, it wasn’t long before I was outraged. When asked his thoughts about God, Maher started talking about how although he only celebrates Christmas as a secular holiday, he thinks of it as a time to reassess. So far, so good – I’m all for reassessing. But then he went on to blurt out (and I won’t use quite his colorful language): “That’s the problem with faith. What it does is it kind of screws up your priorities. Your priorities shouldn’t be saving your own [behind], which is the focus of Christianity.”
Without any support or explanation, he reduced my faith to mere selfishness. For the sake of fairness, I tried to look at it from his perspective, to see what might possibly bring him to say such a thing. Of course, there are some Christians whose main concern is whether they’ve been saved; people who are absolutely confident that if you can’t say you’ve given your soul to Jesus then you are going hell. And undeniably there are some people, a portion of whom would call themselves Christians, that talk big about helping others but never get around to actually doing it. But for the most part, I’m pretty sure that Christianity as intended is actually the exact opposite of what Maher claims.
This morning’s Gospel is the perfect illustration. We get Herod – named King of the Jews by the Roman Emperor – in all of his awful glory. Herod was part of a family dynasty that had ruled Palestine for more than 150 years. He’d do anything to secure his rule, including taking money from the poor to curry favor with the Romans and even having threatening members of his family killed. When he hears from the traveling magi about this star that supposedly heralds the birth of a new king, his only thought is saving his own power and prestige. Any new king is a threat to Herod’s position and that of his heirs; plus, even having rumors spread about such a new king might bring Rome crashing down on Herod. And so he reacts violently, ordering the slaughter of every baby boy in Bethlehem and prompting the holy family’s flight to Egypt. If Bill Maher were right about Christianity, that our priorities are all about saving our own [behinds], then Herod from this morning’s story would be a great exemplar of the Christian faith.
But of course he is no such thing. Herod we abhor. It is the magi who are our models of faith this morning. Which is actually almost as surprising a choice as Herod would have been on a lot of levels.
First, it’s surprising that the magi were included in this story in the first place. They were from outside Jesus’ tradition entirely. They were not from the house of Israel; they would not have been seen as belonging among the chosen people. They were gentiles, foreigners. They seem to have been astrologers who studied the heavens for portents of significant events. Which was not considered a respected vocation by the Jewish people. These magi were not proper religious people, at least, not in the Jewish and early Christian sense. They were not from a tradition that promised a Messiah in the way the Jewish tradition did. In those days, the magi should never have shown up in the nativity scene. But they did, and that is exactly the point. We are all invited to this party – even those who have been traveling radically different paths.
Who are the gentiles and foreigners in our time? The people that we might tend to exclude or discount? The ones that we might assume aren’t worthy of faith?
The second surprising thing is the length to which these gentile foreigners were willing to go in their search for this new king. They undertook an arduous journey, traveling for weeks if not months along unknown rocky roads, encountering God knows what dangers along the way, with no idea where they were going and no real assurance that they would find anything at all when they got there.
A vivid description from T.S. Eliot’s poem “Journey of the Magi”:
'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.'
The magi were willing to be led into alien territory on their search for truth. What is the star we might be called to follow? How far are we willing to go on our journey?
The third surprising thing about the magi is their acceptance of what they find when they finally do reach their destination. We forget that almost certainly they didn’t find what they expected when they reached the stable under that bright star. Their journey took them initially to Jerusalem and Herod; they assumed, understandably, that any new king would be born to a King, in the seat of power. They brought gifts appropriate to just such a circumstance, wealth and riches to impress the prosperous and powerful. This child Jesus with his poverty and questionable birth was probably the last thing they expected. And yet, somehow these outsiders, along with just a few others, like the shepherds who would have been considered at the very bottom of the social and religious totem pole, recognized the coming of the Messiah in the baby Jesus. Somehow, just from nature, the magi are able to intuit what all the scholasticism of the chief priests and scribes could not comprehend. And, we are told, they were “overwhelmed with joy.” What they found at the end of their journey was so completely astonishing, and yet their reaction was joyous and sure. Somehow they understand that in this place, God entered.
The magi set out towards the unknown and ended up discovering a truth that transcended everything they knew. Like them, we can’t presume we know what God has planned, through whom God will act, or where or how God will appear in our lives. Are we as ready as the magi were to recognize Christ in the world in the most unlikely of places, to have our expectations upended?
The fourth surprising thing about the magi is their willingness to give of themselves to this baby Messiah. Once they somehow perceive who Jesus is, they earnestly kneel in the dust and muck of this barn in a backwater town and pay homage to this baby of questionable lineage. And they gratefully hand over the riches of gold, frankincense and myrrh that they have brought for the king for whom they have been searching. For more than a thousand years, religious people have been opining about what these gifts from the magi might symbolize: Perhaps gold represented kingship, frankincense divinity, and myrrh the early death Jesus would suffer. But the truth is, whatever they might be, all of our gifts are merely symbolic. We can’t do anything to return or match God’s gift of infinite generosity in giving God’s self to the world in that baby in the manger. But we, like the magi, can participate in God’s generosity by giving ourselves freely to God and others.
What do we give of ourselves to God? Are we willing to kneel in the muck for Jesus?
And that, I would argue, is the true center of the Christian faith. Phooey on you, Bill Maher.
Matthew 2:1-12
I was reading through a recent Newsweek that had about a dozen interviews with, as the magazine described it, “people who matter on what matters most.” It included an interview with Bill Maher. I was surprised to see him lumped in with the likes of Hillary Clinton and Henry Kissinger, David Petraeus and Harmid Karzai. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given Maher’s propensity to offend, it wasn’t long before I was outraged. When asked his thoughts about God, Maher started talking about how although he only celebrates Christmas as a secular holiday, he thinks of it as a time to reassess. So far, so good – I’m all for reassessing. But then he went on to blurt out (and I won’t use quite his colorful language): “That’s the problem with faith. What it does is it kind of screws up your priorities. Your priorities shouldn’t be saving your own [behind], which is the focus of Christianity.”
Without any support or explanation, he reduced my faith to mere selfishness. For the sake of fairness, I tried to look at it from his perspective, to see what might possibly bring him to say such a thing. Of course, there are some Christians whose main concern is whether they’ve been saved; people who are absolutely confident that if you can’t say you’ve given your soul to Jesus then you are going hell. And undeniably there are some people, a portion of whom would call themselves Christians, that talk big about helping others but never get around to actually doing it. But for the most part, I’m pretty sure that Christianity as intended is actually the exact opposite of what Maher claims.
This morning’s Gospel is the perfect illustration. We get Herod – named King of the Jews by the Roman Emperor – in all of his awful glory. Herod was part of a family dynasty that had ruled Palestine for more than 150 years. He’d do anything to secure his rule, including taking money from the poor to curry favor with the Romans and even having threatening members of his family killed. When he hears from the traveling magi about this star that supposedly heralds the birth of a new king, his only thought is saving his own power and prestige. Any new king is a threat to Herod’s position and that of his heirs; plus, even having rumors spread about such a new king might bring Rome crashing down on Herod. And so he reacts violently, ordering the slaughter of every baby boy in Bethlehem and prompting the holy family’s flight to Egypt. If Bill Maher were right about Christianity, that our priorities are all about saving our own [behinds], then Herod from this morning’s story would be a great exemplar of the Christian faith.
But of course he is no such thing. Herod we abhor. It is the magi who are our models of faith this morning. Which is actually almost as surprising a choice as Herod would have been on a lot of levels.
First, it’s surprising that the magi were included in this story in the first place. They were from outside Jesus’ tradition entirely. They were not from the house of Israel; they would not have been seen as belonging among the chosen people. They were gentiles, foreigners. They seem to have been astrologers who studied the heavens for portents of significant events. Which was not considered a respected vocation by the Jewish people. These magi were not proper religious people, at least, not in the Jewish and early Christian sense. They were not from a tradition that promised a Messiah in the way the Jewish tradition did. In those days, the magi should never have shown up in the nativity scene. But they did, and that is exactly the point. We are all invited to this party – even those who have been traveling radically different paths.
Who are the gentiles and foreigners in our time? The people that we might tend to exclude or discount? The ones that we might assume aren’t worthy of faith?
The second surprising thing is the length to which these gentile foreigners were willing to go in their search for this new king. They undertook an arduous journey, traveling for weeks if not months along unknown rocky roads, encountering God knows what dangers along the way, with no idea where they were going and no real assurance that they would find anything at all when they got there.
A vivid description from T.S. Eliot’s poem “Journey of the Magi”:
'A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.'
The magi were willing to be led into alien territory on their search for truth. What is the star we might be called to follow? How far are we willing to go on our journey?
The third surprising thing about the magi is their acceptance of what they find when they finally do reach their destination. We forget that almost certainly they didn’t find what they expected when they reached the stable under that bright star. Their journey took them initially to Jerusalem and Herod; they assumed, understandably, that any new king would be born to a King, in the seat of power. They brought gifts appropriate to just such a circumstance, wealth and riches to impress the prosperous and powerful. This child Jesus with his poverty and questionable birth was probably the last thing they expected. And yet, somehow these outsiders, along with just a few others, like the shepherds who would have been considered at the very bottom of the social and religious totem pole, recognized the coming of the Messiah in the baby Jesus. Somehow, just from nature, the magi are able to intuit what all the scholasticism of the chief priests and scribes could not comprehend. And, we are told, they were “overwhelmed with joy.” What they found at the end of their journey was so completely astonishing, and yet their reaction was joyous and sure. Somehow they understand that in this place, God entered.
The magi set out towards the unknown and ended up discovering a truth that transcended everything they knew. Like them, we can’t presume we know what God has planned, through whom God will act, or where or how God will appear in our lives. Are we as ready as the magi were to recognize Christ in the world in the most unlikely of places, to have our expectations upended?
The fourth surprising thing about the magi is their willingness to give of themselves to this baby Messiah. Once they somehow perceive who Jesus is, they earnestly kneel in the dust and muck of this barn in a backwater town and pay homage to this baby of questionable lineage. And they gratefully hand over the riches of gold, frankincense and myrrh that they have brought for the king for whom they have been searching. For more than a thousand years, religious people have been opining about what these gifts from the magi might symbolize: Perhaps gold represented kingship, frankincense divinity, and myrrh the early death Jesus would suffer. But the truth is, whatever they might be, all of our gifts are merely symbolic. We can’t do anything to return or match God’s gift of infinite generosity in giving God’s self to the world in that baby in the manger. But we, like the magi, can participate in God’s generosity by giving ourselves freely to God and others.
What do we give of ourselves to God? Are we willing to kneel in the muck for Jesus?
And that, I would argue, is the true center of the Christian faith. Phooey on you, Bill Maher.
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